‘Coonskin’: Harmful Racist Garbage or Enlightening Satire

Most “Black” movies with white directors still have the smudges of the white director all over them. Sometimes the movie's messages are so potent, and the performances so out there that it is truly a shock to learn a director is white.

This was the case for my friend when I showed her Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin for the first time.

Bakshi was born in 1938 and moved to a Black neighborhood early in his life. In Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi, he says:

“All my friends were black, everyone we did business with was black, the school across the street was black. It was segregated, so everything was black. I went to see black movies; black girls sat on my lap. I went to black parties. I was another black kid on the block. No problem!”

Although I usually side-eye any white guy who calls himself another black kid, Bakshi’s experience is about as close as one gets. When we look at his work and factor in the time period, his influences are apparent.

However, a white guy creating a movie called Coonskin and filling it with minstrel imagery and Black stereotypes is going to be controversial at the very least.